


Rude Manners

by citrusuniverse



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Bonding, Existential Crisis, Friendship, Gen, last two grey wardens, swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-03 22:31:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12156114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusuniverse/pseuds/citrusuniverse
Summary: The two last Grey Wardens try to relate to each other while ignoring the inevitable. More at 10 o'clock.





	Rude Manners

“What’s up with your face?” Tabris asks one night from across the campfire. She’s roasting skewered fish on a tilted spit made from the cleanest parts of destroyed fence, head cocked to one side. She’s staring at him with one thick eyebrow perched high on her forehead and the other furrowed, her mouth twisted in confusion, turning the spit without looking. Her eyes glowed in the dark light, reflecting green and orange, too keen and precise.  


“What’s up with all... that?” She reiterates, slower, gesticulating to her head. Alistair, for the life of him, has no fucking clue what Tabris means.  


“My … hair? Or … my face?”  


Thunderlike, she claps her hands. “Yeah!... What’s the deal with ...that?” Tabris asks, looking back at the roasting fish. The skin is charred, and the lemongrass that didn’t quite get stuffed into the fish burns and flavors the smokey air. It smells delicious enough that Alistair forgets to be mad and instead tries to answer her question.  


“Well, you know how it is. The Great Mabari descends upon you on your first  
summerday, naturally and licks your face on way or the other. And you’re stuck with your face like that… I guess.”  


“That’s not what I fucking meant,” Tabris bitterly spits but drops the subject to focus on cooking. The flames spit and hissed as the fish leaked, and the meat began to smoke. Tabris watches the fire, her hands slowly rotating the spit, hair pulled back tight, but wisps curled around her face. Long eared, long nose with long bushy hair, her dark eyes glow searingly bright in the night. Enchantingly iridescent, like an amulet or a focus, through the wavering heat of the air. Smoke burns his eyes. He looks up at the blue star studded sky instead.  


It was a cloudless night, and the sky seemed to too big. The scent of the campfire and the strangeness of Tabris’ question sent his mind whirling. He imagined himself suspended before a vast pit of emptiness. No, not a pit; an ocean filled with bobbing beacons of light, and the only thing keeping him from falling was his grip of the cold grass. His fingers ripped into the hard earth. An anchor suspended over an infinite ocean. 

“Ok, I know I am not imagining it.”  


“What?” He asked.  


“Can I do something?”  


“What is it?”  


“I’m just going to touch your face real quick,” Tabris asked. Her face was set with the same determination she wore whenever she suspected a road might not be innocuous as it seemed to be. And all those times she usually was right. Even though, it felt strange; even though Tabris probably was not going to find bandits on his face, he nodded.  


“Fine.”  


“Hold still.”  


She took her hands and put them on his face, her thumbs resting on the nexus where his cheek met his nose. He remained completely still as stone, as if she was extracting shrapnel from his cheek and a stray twitch could send metal deeper into his skin. Her intent eyes focused entirely on him. She seemed to regard this action, that put them so unusual close, deserving of the same severity of a medical procedure. only, instead of removing bloody metal, she was extracting information deep on his face that only she knew how to remove.  


As far as Alistair was aware, he looked pretty normal. Once he opened his mouth all bets were off. But normal, he was. Tall, brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, stupidly large ears and blemishes. The same traits he had all his life, a low born, mud bred Fereldan, not fair and angular like the nobles nor dark and squat like elves or dwarves.  


Tabris traced her thumbs under his cheek bones, her index fingers affixed on his temple. Black eyes followed from one side of his face to the other and he realized she was taking measurements, or something like measurements. Her precision was uncanny.  


Tabris’ hands were warm against his chilled cheeks, and smelling of ash. The callouses of her fingertips were rough but he was familiar with rough skin. He thought briefly of the bandages and tonics in his pack, the kind you use to ease the pain of callouses. But she continued to manipulate his face, surprisingly gently, and he promised himself to remember for later.  
Her hands continued to hold his face, pressed against his skin, smushing and unsmushing his no doubt perplexed expression.  


“Are you done?” he mumbled through pursed lips.  


“Nope.”  


Alistair sighed. “Well at the least, it's you who has a fixation on my face and not Shale.”  


A chuckle escaped from between Tabris’ lips, which turned upward in an involuntary smirk. “That would end very badly for you.” She moved her hands from his face, only to tilt his chin up to hers, and cover his brow with her other hand. Her hands were gentle now, and though this position wasn’t much different from how they were before, looking up at Tabris felt … different. Her breath blew over his face, smelling of lemongrass, ale and the suggestion of mint leaves. Maker, had he ever been so close to a woman for so long before?  


“Huh...Weird.” Realization dawned across her face.  


“What? What is it?” Alistair asked, the rumblings of dread began to curl in his stomach. He imagined an ill white patch of decaying skin and dead blood vessels that signified the more aggressive version of the taint. Or an injury behind his ear he must have missed and was killing him. Naturally his ears began to itch and Alistair began to fidget.  
Tabris released his face. “That’s so weird, you look exactly like someone i knew.”  


“And?”  


“And what?”  


“Am I dying?”  


“What? No. I just wanted to see if you looked like this kid I once knew.”  


“Are you kidding me? That’s what that was all about?”  


“Ok but, if you just change your chin and have bigger ears, you would look exactly like this guy- Actually you kinda look like his mom, too.”  


“So I am not prematurely dying of the taint?”  


Tabris sputtered out a cackle. “Is that what you thought i was doing? You thought I was checking to see if I needed to kill you?! Bah, Alistair, I’m a bit more subtle than that!”  


Alistair pursed his lips together. “Well - just so you know, because you might now- typically people just use their eyes to study resemblances, not their hands,” He said. He could still smell mint. “I’m gonna go get more firewood.”  


“Oh, don’t be like that! You’re clean, a perfect model of health. Well, as clean as someone who ingested a large amount of darkspawn blood.”  


“Secrets! Grey warden secrets!” Alistair hissed. “Why are you revealing our secrets.”  


“Oh yeah, because everyone is wide awake eagerly listening to our thrilling conversation. And besides, we have a major shortage of wardens. We should publish our recipe.”  


“Ah yes, make a grey warden drink! Two parts rose water, one part malted liquor and one part corrupted blood, flavor with honey and darkspawn entrails.”  


“Ok, you lost me at malt liquor.”  


“Says the one who drank blood.”  


“Yes, but I don’t drink disgusting shit like that on a daily base.”  


“You drink blood?”  


Tabris had the nerve to roll her eyes at that. “What do you think gravy is made of?”  


“It's not all blood… I mean, cream gravy has other stuff in it. And why are we still talking about? Loghain’s spies could be doing spy stuff, like spying and find out our secrets.”  


“Oh no, what will we do! They’ll learn that we don’t actually have our shit together and then we will be really ruined!”

**Author's Note:**

> I'd die for these characters


End file.
